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Kazaa Ruled Legal in The Netherlands
DreamerFi writes "Developers of Kazaa cannot be held liable for the way people use their software, the Dutch Supreme Court has ruled. The dutch version of the RIAA, BUMA Stemra is now expected to start lawsuits against individuals, following the american lead, according to dutch news channels."
Well d-uh.
Any successful attempt at making code illegal will just turn it into samizdat and speed the adoption of encrypted & anonymous P2P apps (ala FreeNet). It's too bad the recording industry doesn't put as much effort into signing new and original bands as they do fighting to protect their antiquated business model.
Yes, I buy CDs but nothing you'd see on a Top 40 chart, will that make me a criminal one day?
Trolling is a art,
Because of all this shit over music I have stoped buying. I use to try out stuff on the old napster (tells you how long ago that was) and if I liked I would get the CD, but now that the RIAA (and co.) has made it clear they don't want my busness, I have stoped, stoped listening and stoped buying. And the radio music stations have way to many comercials to be enjoyable. I have moved on to talk radio, and I have to say I think I enjoy talk radio more, and there seams to be far less comercials then music radio. Good by music, hello talk.
Ah, it's refreshing to see some sanity in the courts, even if it is on another continent. If the courts blame kazaa for what its users do, it would logically follow that we'd have to blame gun manufacturers for the actions of bank robbers, blame car manufacturers for the crimes of people involved in hit-and-run accidents, and blame alcohol manufacturers for the stupid things drunk people do.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
The dutch version of the RIAA, BUMA Stemra is now expected to start lawsuits against individuals, following the american lead
It's about time some judge realizes that P2P is perfectly legal. If there is illegal activity going on (piracy), then it is up to the authorities/owners to find out who the perps are, and do what they feel is necessary.
Hopefully, if these RIAA-led anti-piracy campaigns are successful, it will be more ammo against the DMCA. After all, why would that unconstitutional law be necessary if they have a more effective means of enforcing their copyrights?
What isn't legal in the Netherlands?
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Because it's not the US - it's liberal Europe, with a different mindset. We've outgrown our empire building, and can relax with legal drugs, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, far fewer problems with racism, pornography etc. A far cry from the uptight US.
Let's say I use Quickbooks to bookkeep an illegal betting service at my school. Is someone going to sue Quicken Software (or whoever the mfg is) for my use of their software. NO! If anythingthey should allow programmers and designers to learn from the program and develop new ideas on future software. The fact the KaZaa had to be established on the Island of Vanuatu, where corporate laws are far different form US or other westernized economies is ridiculous! Let business flourish! As Adam Sith would say: "laissez faire!"
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So kudos to the court, who are dead right. Kazaa should not be a special case and made illegal, just like video recorders, DVD burners, CD burners, cassette recorders, MP3 player/recorders, codecs, etc etc. The music industry reply is that the files could easily be filtered to stop copyrighted material from being shared. I beg to know how they propose to find out from an MP3 file whether it is copyrighted; the "copyright" bit in the files is removeable so that's not a solution is it?
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We (the dutch) pay an extra tax (something like 50 cents) on each blank CD, and up to 1.50 on blank dvd's.... It really gets my heartrate going when I think about that.
Furthermore, this decision only affects distribution from The Netherlands. The advocat general briefly touches US, UK and German law, but does not draw any conclusions from this.
So, also regarding the recent decisions in California, Kazaa will probably live as a programme.
However, the BUMA/STEMRA (dutch equivalents of the US RIAA) will probably start now with lawsuits to individual end-users who offer large amounts of files on-line. A lot of case law with respect to tort by offering infriningement illegal information on-line is already available, so the real ground battle can start. Bring in the grunts (copyright lawyers, that is).
They blatently prodice a place/means for people to illegally share copyrighted material. this is its major purpose, and the kazaa developers know that.
If you know about a crime, and you don't do anything about it (or at least try to) you are breaking the law in many places. The fact that Kazaa has not ever tried to limit the music swapping is proof that they should be found guilty of at least neglegence.
Just because you provide a warhouse where people can trade goods, if the goods are mostly stolen property, and you know that, you are in deep shit.
I'm posting AC because this will likely get modded down, but this is the way it is people.
A couple of months or so, Buma/Stemra's spokesman had a media interview, in which he said that they would not be suing consumers until there was a good commercial music download option for consumers in the Netherlands. Apparently, at that time they felt (correctly) that the country would be in an uproar if they started suing consumers over trading.
So if they started suing now, that would be in direct contradiction of their earlier statements (and it would be extremely unpopular, I could even see it leading to a law that makes music sharing over the Internet explicitly legal). In current law, downloading is legal, uploading is not.
And anyway, all they could get in a lawsuit is an order for the person to stop sharing, I think, as long as there's no commercial piracy involved.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I wish back in high school that I could have known that, when I was buying records, I was providing the bands I liked with almost no financial support. More than 95% of my purchase price was going straight to one of the most corrupt industries on the planet.
I'm not at all surprised to hear that the Netherlands' version of the RIAA is now going after individual users. The industry has clearly decided that the threat of litigation is about the only thing that's going to keep people buying CD's.
Except for one tiny thing. In the process of trying to scare people, they've made people like me their lifelong enemies. Now, where music is concerned, I have only two ambitions: one is to give the artists I like as much support as possible. And the other is to not give another penny of my money to RIAA labels. Quite simply, the RIAA has a completely different vision of the future than that of music lovers. They want to keep themselves as the middlemen in perpetuity, despite the fact that technology has the potential for making major labels irrelevant.
That's one reason why, as much as I love the iTunes radio store, I would never purchase an album from there that was produced by an RIAA affiliated label.
What people disgusted by RIAA actions need to do is to work hard to educate the public about why the industry does not deserve our support. Music lovers ought to be doing everything possible to starve out the RIAA affiliated labels, and to channel as much of their entertainment dollar directly to artists. And we should especially support artists who are wise enough to help us in this task -- artists who sign with magnatune, or who have a website set up so that they keep the bulk of every purchasing dollar.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
This is obviously off topic, but I need help...
As a retail store owner of a punk rock music shop, I really want to open a section (and eventually make it my only section) of "Non RIAA Punk Rock music." It should be bands of national scale, doesn't have to be popular bands, and definitely shouldn't be radio or MTV bands.
Does anyone have a link or knowledge of which labels are not RIAA linked? The distributors have no idea...
This just in:
From The Associated Press:
Dec 19, 10:45 AM EST
Record Industry May Not Subpoena Providers
By TED BRIDIS
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Friday rejected efforts by the recording industry to compel the nation's Internet providers to identify subscribers accused of illegally distributing music online.
In a substantial setback for the industry's controversial anti-piracy campaign, the three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a ruling by the trial judge to enforce a copyright subpoena.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates had approved use of the subpoenas, forcing Verizon Communications Inc. to turn over names and addresses for at least four Internet subscribers. Since then, Verizon has identified dozens of its other subscribers to music industry lawyers.
The appeals court said one of the arguments by the Recording Industry Association of America "borders upon the silly," rejecting the trade group's claims that Verizon was responsible for downloaded music because such data files traverse its network.
Verizon had challenged the constitutionality of the subpoenas under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The law, passed years before downloading music over peer-to-peer Internet services became popular, compels Internet providers to turn over the names of suspected pirates upon subpoena from any U.S. District Court clerk's office. A judge's signature is not required. Critics contend judges ought to be more directly involved.
Verizon had argued at its trial that Internet providers should only be compelled to respond to such subpoenas when pirated music is stored on computers that providers directly control, such as a Web site, rather than on a subscriber's personal computer.
In his ruling, the trial judge wrote that Verizon's interpretation "makes little sense from a policy standpoint," and warned that it "would create a huge loophole in Congress' effort to prevent copyright infringement on the Internet."
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